


Scaling The Wall

by AraniaDraws (AraniaArt), Dashicra1



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale loves him so much, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley's having a Bad Time but Aziraphale makes it better, Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang, Fall-related self-doubt, First Kiss, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Involuntary snake transformation, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Scene: The Ritz (Good Omens), Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Snake Crowley gets a smooch, crowley has a lot of feelings, mild body horror, with art!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29032833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraniaArt/pseuds/AraniaDraws, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dashicra1/pseuds/Dashicra1
Summary: With all of the drama of the Not-Apocalypse behind them and an ambiguous future before them, Crowley finds that he must suddenly come to terms with a part of himself he'd been ignoring for far too long.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 103
Collections: Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang





	Scaling The Wall

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! This fic is a part of the Good Omens DIWS Reverse Bang Event, written by me (Dashicra) and lovingly illustrated by the wonderful and incredibly talented Arania! Additional shout-outs go to Arania and the ever-accommodating Balder12 for beta-reading this fic, as well as to the amazing humans on the DIWS Discord for being such a great support system! I love you all!
> 
>   
> 

Crowley might die. Well, discorporate, really, but after the stunt they’d just pulled, discorporation would be as good as death anyway. _No, stop, none of that here,_ his last few scraps of sanity insisted. _We’ve made it our business not to think about that anymore for the rest of forever._

The rest of forever, with drinks at the bookshop, walks in the park, and coquettish flutters of eyelashes over crème brûlée to look forward to without fear of retribution. The parks still existed to walk through. The Ritz still had their usual table on reserve. The world was effectively just as it had been before the events of the last several days had nearly made a mess of it all. It was close to impossible to believe.

Just that morning Crowley’d almost lost everything all over again, but he somehow managed to make it out with the aerosol tang of heaven clouding his head and the taste of hellfire on his lips. Then Aziraphale had arrived, safe and whole, and made a point of showboating his own (impossible, incredible, _miraculous_ ) escape.1 They’d laughed and joked, and Crowley tried not to buckle under the weight of it. The familiar ache of watching Aziraphale work his way through three courses of goose confit (while seated at their usual table in the not-destroyed Ritz) had almost been relaxing after all the paradigm-shifting of the last few days.

However, it seemed that the world was not quite finished remaking itself. Thirty seconds ago, the angel had leaned in across the pristine tablecloth and covered Crowley’s hand with his own, and he’d nearly leapt out of his skin.2 Clearly the world was _not at all_ like it had been a few days ago, there was _still more_ paradigm-shifting to endure, and Crowley might die.

It wasn’t as if this was the first time they’d touched. They’d held hands a number of times before, when it had been customary to do so, and had even shared a kiss or two.3 But this touch felt different, purposeful, like it had in the odd gloom of a midnight bus bound for Mayfair. That touch had been almost desperate, Crowley’d thought at the time. A _thank you,_ a _please don’t leave me alone,_ an _I’ve lost so much today but at least you’re still with me._ Now that all of the pressures of Above and Below had been summarily extinguished, and the bookshop was standing proud right where it should be, what comfort remained in this kind of touch? What role was left for Crowley in Aziraphale’s life now that the Arrangement was seemingly complete? There was no way that anything more could become of their relationship, no possibility that they could be close in the way that Crowley’d wanted since practically the dawn of time. Was there?

He mentally yanked himself back from that dangerous precipice. He knew its edges well, the weak spots and the sturdy ones. It was tall and wall-shaped, and he’d stood on its edge more times than he could count, gazing out and imagining a vast, hopeful something waiting below. But, as he knew from experience, sometimes the only thing waiting over the edge of a precipice was _Down._ The familiar sense of mortal terror he felt whenever his l-word emotions grew too strong had amplified to an obscene degree in the last several decades, and it seemed that there was no limit to how much worse it would get. Even something as simple as a touch of their hands left his mind canvassing the well-trod path along the Wall. Every errant question could contain the threat of a million-light-year plummet into lonely oblivion. When had the Wall become a barricade, a cliff, something impassable, with only the promise of immediate doom to show for its height?

“Crowley, dear.” _Dear. What?_ “You may wish to stop glaring at the teapot, or else it could very well shatter into pieces.”

Crowley came back to himself and realized that, as Aziraphale had said, the stylish glass teapot was nearly trembling under the force of his gaze. It wasn’t all that often that (allegedly inanimate) objects personally objected to his presence, so Crowley took a moment to catalogue his physical state. It wasn’t long before he arrived upon the problem.

His eyes had gone completely serpentine behind his glasses. His vision had also shifted without his notice, and the slight burning itch that meant his snake form was clashing against his human one gathered in the skin around his eyes.

He groaned internally, thankful4 that Aziraphale couldn’t see his eyes. There was a very good reason why thoughts of the l-word were prohibited when anyone else was around to see the results.5 Crowley slouched further into his seat and forced his eyes back into their usual, only semi-snakelike, configuration with the ease of long-developed habit.

Except. Nothing changed. The colors of the world remained monochromatic, his focus was still drawn towards movement and heat, and the hellfire-glow of them had refused to fade.

He tried again, with the same amount of success. That was to say, _none._ He felt a frustrated hiss developing at the back of his throat and only barely managed to restrain it. _Ah, well,_ he thought. _It’s only the eyes. This happens often enough._ He desperately avoided the idea that he had always been able to shift the eyes back before.

Aziraphale’s hand was still covering his own, and he’d apparently given up on a verbal response from Crowley for the moment as he’d started talking about a new method of making crèpes suzette. Crowley fought to keep his gaze off of the traumatized teapot and away from Aziraphale, the latter of which was rather a feat.6 All things considered, he thought he was doing a fairly good job of keeping his cool.

“Are you alright, dear boy? You seem a bit on-edge this afternoon.”

Though, he’d certainly been wrong before. Aziraphale’s brow was knit in a _fretful_ expression that Crowley had seen far too frequently these last eleven years, and he was instantly struck by the urge to reach out and smooth it away. This urge was met with a sickening, swooping feeling as his metaphysical essence did its best to remind him of what happens when someone touches something they shouldn’t. When someone desires something that’s not meant for them. When a soon-to-be demon wanders over and asks some questions and nets himself (and the whole of humanity) an eternity separated from God and a lifetime of eating the dust of the earth for his trouble.

All at once his focus relocated to where their hands rested together on the table, and the floor might as well have dropped out from under him.

“Is this about what happened today? I assure you, I had them all quite flummoxed--”

“No, no, s’not that,” Crowley replied, only half-convinced that he was telling the truth. “It’s just...ah...” He desperately searched for something to say, some plausible reason that he might be stressed. Unfortunately, his higher functions were devoted to restraining and cataloguing his emotions. Worse still, his emotions amounted to a terrifying and incoherent lurch somewhere deep within whatever passed for his ribcage.

Aziraphale’s thumb stroked along the skin of his inner wrist, and a stone on the Wall crumbled underfoot.

Suddenly, the angel’s hand might as well have been made of brambles for the way that Crowley’s skin prickled beneath it. His mind registered nothing except for the incredible _wrongness_ of the sensation,7 and for a moment, he arrived upon the horrible idea that his demonic nature had at last decided to rebel against Aziraphale’s touch the way he’d always been told that it should. Thankfully, the knowledge that he and Aziraphale had only recently been _inside_ one another’s corporations, no explosions involved, spared him from that line of thinking.

He wondered briefly at the fact that Aziraphale still _had_ hands. And a body attached to them. They’d returned to their respective corporations just that morning, and nearly as recently, Aziraphale hadn’t had a corporation at all. This vein of thought was filled with newly-planted landmines, and he examined each of them warily. Flashes of the archangels’ smug and self-righteous faces as he’d stood at Aziraphale’s execution rushed past him, closely followed by the sensation of crackling, malicious heat, heat that would have destroyed Aziraphale forever. The whole effect was chased down with the memory of another close brush with flame, a terrible moment in a cinder-choked bookshop when he’d thought the angel had been destroyed forever, and his fingers clenched where they rested beneath Aziraphale’s.

It was all too easy for love to be ripped away. Crowley had extensive personal experience with that fact. _Unforgivable. Accursed. Damned. Serpent._ The stones on the Wall whispered menacing truths up at him, and he wished more than ever that he could resist the hope that called to him from beyond it. Better yet, he wished he could be content to stay on the ground behind it, to never look for anything more. The ground was solid, familiar. According to God, he belonged there anyway, snake that he was.

Somehow, none of this rationale had ever been enough to stop him from looking, from dreaming. Curiosity and hope had gotten the better of him over and over again since the Beginning. He asked the questions, he tempted the humans, he climbed the Wall. _The angel could never love you. Even if he did, to move beyond the Wall is to ignore your place in the world. To step closer to that edge is to Fall all over again. Be wary, Serpent. There might not be anyone waiting for you on the other side._

“Crowley, you know that I’m willing to listen to whatever you have to say, don’t you?” Aziraphale’s thumb continued its circuitous path along the sharp peaks of his knuckles, the valleys between his fingers, the delicate space at his wrist where his decorative pulse thundered along beneath the skin. “I realize that these last few days have been rather, ah, _overwhelming._ But we’ve made it out, haven’t we? Together, just as you always told me we would. _To the world,_ we said. Only recently, if you recall.”

Aziraphale was beaming at him now, and he couldn’t even appreciate it because his snake eyes were focused more on the warm glow of him, the heat and movement of his soft hand over Crowley’s, and he still felt that flaming, itching irritation--

“It’sss jussst. I’m. I’m hot.” Crowley tried not to grimace at his own words. Really, Original Tempter of Eden, and _that’s_ the best he could come up with?8

“Hot? I suppose it is a rather sunny day, all things considered. Well, if the heat bothers you so intensely, we might be better suited to spend the rest of the evening at your flat.”

“Right, yeah, I’ll just. Right.”

Ever so slowly, Crowley withdrew his hand to the safety of his own lap, intending to reach for his freshly-summoned wallet. He had almost completely covered the distance when his motion-sensitive eyes focused on something dark and shiny glinting in the light. It took an embarrassingly long moment for him to comprehend the oddly-textured blackness that had gathered along the back of his hand, but soon enough the familiar pattern and shape of his own scales registered in his mind.

What followed was a rather long and tumultuous mental tirade in which curse words he hadn’t used in literal centuries came suddenly to the fore. _No, no, no. He’d been_ touching _me, he had to have felt it, right? Please, no. Cursed, Damned Serpent, touching an angel like that, inflicting yourself upon him. Who do you think you are?_

With a flurry of speed he’d only used when certain angels were in life-or-death straits, Crowley snapped a wad of cash into existence on the table,9 ushered Aziraphale out the door, and politely suggested to the universe that the Bentley in fact was parked right out front and not a block down where they’d left it. Aziraphale took to the sudden happenings with remarkable aplomb, and in fact seemed rather a bit giddy about the whole affair, as if he thought that perhaps Crowley was whisking him off to France.

For his part, Crowley kept his hands firmly in his too-small pockets10 for as long as possible until he realized that driving the Bentley anywhere involved the use of them. By the time Aziraphale had settled in on the passenger side, Crowley was sporting a pair of attractive driving gloves and gripping the wheel squarely with both hands.

“Oh! Are those new, dear? They’re lovely.”

Aziraphale looked legitimately impressed by the gloves, which was reassuring, and Crowley was halfway to preening before he remembered the reason for the gloves in the first place. Patches of skin on his forearms started to burn, so Crowley gritted his teeth and pulled out into traffic as quickly as possible.11 Thankfully, Aziraphale seemed content not to press the issue, and Crowley let out a long, silent breath. If he could make it to the apartment intact, there was a good chance he could figure out just _what the hell_ 12 was up with his corporation.

Then Aziraphale’s hand was on his thigh. Crowley nearly took out a Volkswagen.

Aziraphale, somehow, retained only a fraction of his usual Crowley’s-driving-related nervous jitters and kept his hand staunchly where it was. A terrible whooshing noise thundered in Crowley’s ears, and his useless internal organs felt like they were trying to consume one another. The Wall shuddered beneath him, and a few more stones worked free. It was perhaps the most torturous thing he had ever experienced.13

He growled and cursed and used an unprecedented number of demonic miracles just to keep the car intact and both of them safely housed within their bodies, but eventually, after a drive which could have lasted anywhere from thirty seconds to ten years, they arrived in Mayfair. Crowley didn’t even need to look to know that his thigh was covered in scales up to the hip.

They left the Bentley parked in a loading zone against the front kerb and made the excruciating trek up to Crowley’s penthouse flat. Crowley tried his hardest not to draw attention to the fact that his walk was significantly more wobbly than normal. The scales covering his left leg chafed strangely against his skin-tight trousers, and his knees had developed a questionable relationship with existence in the time since they’d left the car. Aziraphale-- _bless him? damn him?_ \--looped an arm through Crowley’s as they stepped into the lift, and at this rate he may as well have been tottering around on a pair of mallow twists.14

Then, the lift’s shiny mirrored doors slid shut. Crowley tried valiantly not to scream at the state of his reflection, but the horror of what he saw threatened his fraying self-control and a hiss escaped from between his clenched teeth instead. Reflection Crowley looked terrified, deathly pale, barely holding on to any sort of reality. He looked half-alive, half-human, half-sane, half- _himself._ Aziraphale retained his gentle grip on his arm, genial and warm as ever, but Crowley could barely stand to see his angel touching any part of this wreck he’d become.

He tried so hard to keep cool, look good, be clean and stylish and person-shaped. Eons, he’d kept it up. Aziraphale hadn’t seen his serpent form since Eden, back when Crowley had been too young15 and stupid to know how the world--how Aziraphale-- must percieve him. He’d learned his lesson for the first time a few hundred years into life on Earth, when he’d stopped by a little settlement in the desert one night to check up on the humans. Overwhelmed with comfort, companionship, and conversation, he made the mistake of shifting in the presence of the humans to better enjoy the heat from their fire. All at once, they’d shouted, cursed, threw stones, and informed him that a Demon was not welcome among their kind.

So, Crowley’d sealed that form away, used miracles to prevent their scrutiny, concealed his eyes, and tried to emulate them and their fashions as well as he could.16 The humans were often wonderful, friendly, and compassionate to him while they believed he was one of their own. However, with the exception of a few cults and pantheistic societies over the millenia, giving the humans a glimpse of his eyes or revealing a shiver of his scales would instill them with terror and hatred and leave Crowley cast out. He was only welcome if he looked like them, and Crowley learned from it. He had been tempted to shift every now and then, to prove to himself that he could, but the fear of remaining trapped in his Serpent form, of forgetting his true face, had kept him from it. Even a partial shift was only useful for instilling fear.

Aziraphale was another idea. After the first few centuries of awful experiences with the humans, he’d realized that Aziraphale would be much the same, would prefer Crowley to look as he himself did. The fewer reminders of their predicament, of the impossibility of their companionship, the better. Even so, Crowley couldn’t help chafing at the occasional compliments, his internal monologue lashing out at the idea that his alleged good side was all that Aziraphale wanted to see.

‘That was very kind of you,’ Aziraphale would say, all twinkly eyes and dimpled cheeks, and Crowley’d feel that snake at the core of him curl tighter around itself. _How easily love can be ripped away._ Every word was a new stone for the Wall.

And now Aziraphale had _touched him. Repeatedly._ In less than an hour, Crowley had been reduced to a snarling, trembling creature of dark scales and venom, and somehow Aziraphale carried on as if there was nothing strange about it. _Because this is what he sees every time he looks at you. A mess. A monster. One of the Fallen. Never forget. Why would he ever love you? He’d hate what you truly are. He pities you._ Crowley bit down on the inside of his lip, and a suddenly-too-sharp incisor pinched against his skin.

When the lift finally pinged their destination and the doors parted for them, Crowley could have sobbed from the relief of seeing nothing more than a nondescript hallway in his path.

“Oh, it’s so strange to think that before last night I hadn’t ever paid a visit to your flat. Now here we are for the second time in as many days!”

Crowley heard Aziraphale’s voice, but he could barely place the words. His subconscious clung desperately to the sound of it, the musical rising and falling, the roundness of his vowels. He could listen to Aziraphale speak for centuries,17 but at the moment all he could think about was getting the angel settled someplace far away from him so that he could lose his mind in peace. He managed a non-committal hum and mentally announced to the door of his flat that it had better open for them before he kicked it down.

After the door had obligingly opened, Aziraphale released his arm, thank someone, and gazed contemplatively down at the threshold. “It really is so simple, isn’t it? Crossing the threshold? It’s silly, but… I suppose I had expected something more grandiose. Hopping over a broomstick, getting carried off somewhere--humans really do make a hubbub out of the whole thing, don’t they? There is something to be said for simplicity, however. After everything, all it takes is a single step. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting for so long, dear boy.”

Crowley really did not have time for this. His feet were on fire,18 his eyes focused and refocused frantically, and his needle-sharp teeth were pricking the sensitive inside of his mouth. He could feel his spine creak ominously, trying to shove some 500 more vertebrae where they didn’t belong.

“Yup,” Crowley said, and his ornamental lungs seized against his too-numerous ribs. “Simple. Stepping. Yup.”

In a moment of sheer desperation, determined to get through the doorway sometime this decade, Crowley brushed past Aziraphale and pressed onward into the welcoming darkness of his flat. His lower back itched fiercely, and the rear of his trousers had begun to bulge as his body did its resolute best to extend a tail from the base of his lengthening spine. Before long, it would have nowhere else to go but out into plain sight, where Aziraphale would see it and be horrified and turn away from him just as he had every time before.19

What did it matter that they were meant to have moved on from their former bosses if they were still the same people, or in Crowley’s case, the same creature? Aziraphale had never wanted him in the past, so why would he start now? That hope on the horizon, that beautiful mirage that sent Crowley to the Wall’s edge again and again, could never hold up to the truth of what he was. His hands clenched at his sides as he stalked through the entryway to his flat, and the leather gloves strained against his undoubtedly long, black fingernails. He could hear Aziraphale’s footsteps following dutifully along behind him, and he briefly considered using a cloaking miracle to conceal the unfolding horror. Aziraphale would know immediately of course, would discover the problem, would run away--No. He had to scrape together some sort of distance, some sort of escape. Aziraphale didn’t deserve to see this. _How easily love can be ripped away. Cursed. Serpent. Who do you think you are?_

“Hey, Aziraphale,” he began, the words forced out of him on a great surge of panic-induced coolness. He tried to remember how it had felt to lie to Hell, how relatively easy it had been to pull up a smarmy grin and swagger his way out of danger. He had always been terrible at it with Aziraphale, but _bless it,_ he had to try. “Why don’t you fix us a drink, yeah? I’ll just. Wash up. Long day and all. Wouldn’t want to go around with this corporation smelling like Hell.”20

Crowley’s motion-sensitive eyes latched onto the angel’s hands, which fluttered restlessly in front of him, tugging at his waistcoat, straightening his tie, clasping one another, running through the whole routine again. Crowley refused to look at his face. _Monster. He could never love you. See how he’s ready to run? He fears you._

“Of course, darling! I’d be happy to get things situated out here. By all means, take your time. The champagne and I will keep for a while. We’ve waited this long, after all.”

Crowley barely resisted slipping his horrifying, thin, bifurcated tongue out to test whether the angel was actually as warm as he suddenly appeared. He’d lost nearly his whole mouth to the snake now, and it wouldn’t be long before his humanoid airways shifted themselves into snakehood accordingly. The weight of the situation came crashing down around him again, shattering his pitiful façade of confidence like a sheet of single-pane glass. _Serpent._ The Wall shuddered mightily, and Crowley had to use a minor miracle on the beleaguered gloves to keep his claws from ripping into his own palms. His eyes, he knew, were wide and angry behind his sunglasses, and he spared a woeful thought for the eyelids he so seldom used and now desperately missed. _As if any of your affectations have ever made a difference. You’re a monster and he knows it. Get out of his sight. You are Fallen. Never forget._

Without another word,21 Crowley staggered down the never-ending hallway towards the conveniently-miracled bathroom, intent on remaining there until either the building itself rotted away around him or his body cleaned up its act, whichever came first. Aziraphale would hardly hurt for his absence, especially while he was like this. Nobody would ever want to see him like this. He was an abomination.

The door to the bathroom clicked satisfyingly shut behind him, and Crowley slumped against it. His chest heaved with the effort of keeping his legs in commission, the unnecessary breath providing a calming counterpoint to the strange twisting deep within his gut. He knew he was becoming taller and slimmer by the minute, and the gruesome stretch and flex of his tendons sent sparking, itching tremors down his spine. Even his face was beginning to succumb to the change. He could feel the skin along his hairline burn as it worked to make way for the serpent to emerge.

Crowley summoned his will and forced himself to take the few steps necessary to make it across the room to the stylishly-tiny wash basin. The mirror above the basin was equally stylish and tiny, and it consisted of a single, thin strip of polished stainless steel situated at approximate eye-level.22 He considered it one of his favorite pieces, frustrating and stylish in equal measure. However, after he’d made it to the basin, torn off the miserable leather gloves and his suddenly-irritating sunglasses, and splashed some negligibly-refreshing water over his face, he realized his error in including it on this occasion.

The artistic bar of a mirror served as a perfect frame to reflect his fiery, bulging snake eyes, the sulphurous yellow of which would have burned into the memory of any who witnessed them. They glowed from the shadows of his face like the afterimage of a glance at the sun. Crowley couldn’t even muster the energy to flinch.

_Horror. Hatred. You are a creature of the Blackest Pit. This is your punishment. A soul from which even God has turned away, a face which even God would not love. You may have learned to love another, but no other shall care for you. You are the Fallen. Never forget._

Crowley gritted his teeth. “You’re wrong. We saved Earth together. We changed the world. There could be something. He cares. I… I know he does.”

_Fool. Damned. Foul Creature. If you have such faith, look upon yourself. See the truth of yourself, what you truly are beneath the skin. You wish to climb the Wall, to see what lies before you. Do it. Look upon yourself. Tell him as you are. Let him know you as you are. A Beast. A Serpent. Look._

He knew then that a larger mirror hung against the wall directly behind him, the room shaping itself to the commands of its master. He could feel its presence press down on his mind, sure of its purpose. He turned.

There, reflected back at him, was all the distorted glory of his corporation. The familiar face, the long-limbed shape, and the flashy hair remained. And yet, everything was wrong. He looked far from human, no longer halfway as he’d been in the lift. Stricken, he shrugged out of his fitted jacket and slung it half-heartedly over the marble countertop. Indeed, there were patches of black scales dotted over his whiplike arms. His fingers were taloned, and the backs of his hands were blackened with hard keratin ridges. A long, thick tail had pressed free of his trousers and now writhed against the backs of his thighs.

_See what you are, Serpent?_ The Wall sang gleefully up at him. _Do you see why you cannot be loved? You may hide it, repress it, try to run, pretend to be as human as any person on the street, but you know the truth. Push too far, and soon enough, Aziraphale will know it too. And you’ve seen how easily love can be ripped away._

Crowley shuddered, clutched at the marble, and fought against the clamoring thoughts swirling in his head. He tried to remember the hope he’d felt so long ago, the hope he’d still felt even that afternoon. He called to mind every positive interaction he’d shared with Aziraphale, all the places, times, moments when he’d almost thought they would take that step, walk out into the unknown, start a life hand-in-hand on the other side of the Wall, with a new world before them and the world they’d known fading into memory behind. He imagined a world in which Aziraphale would turn to look at him, would touch his face, look into his eyes, and not have anything to fear. A world where Crowley could stand by his side as an equal.

_There, do you see? You know he would not love this part of you. Even in your wildest fantasies, you cannot escape what you are. You cannot be what he would want from you. You are not a human, Crowley. You are the Fallen. There is nothing beyond the Wall for you._

“Shut up!” Crowley shouted. His vocal chords twinged from their overstretched space in his throat. “I don’t know that. I don’t know any of this. He--he might not--”

“Crowley, dear, are you alright?”

Aziraphale’s voice came clear and lovely and concerned from beyond the bathroom door, and Crowley’s breath stuttered and died in his chest. His head twisted round at a speed that would have been highly inadvisable had he currently possessed an average number of neck vertebrae, eyes wide and tongue flicking wildly. The angel knocked politely and called for him again, as posh and pristine as ever, and Crowley tried very hard not to love him for it, even through his shock.23

“I’m sorry to intrude, but, well. I heard you cry out, and I wondered if you might have fallen, or--or gotten hurt.”24

Crowley stayed silent, unable to process anything beyond the fact that the angel was right outside the door. All at once, Crowley’s lips and nose decided to make themselves scarce, sending a ripple of scales over his face and down the rest of his torso. Crowley sank to the floor. The transformation was nearly complete now, only limbs and hair left to lose, and a flimsy door was all that separated Aziraphale from him.

A flimsy door which Crowley had forgotten to lock.

“Crowley, I do apologize, but I am coming in.”

The handle turned, the door swung open, and--

“Oh, good lord! Whyever are you on the floor? And what’s happened to your clothes? Crowley, it looks as though there’s been a brawl.”

Crowley sat in shock, hissing quietly as Aziraphale walked up to and past him to collect his glasses and gloves from the floor near the wash basin.

“You’ve destroyed your lovely new gloves as well. Goodness, dear. If you were in such a hurry to get undressed, you might have let me help you rather than ripping apart your clothing.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley murmured, unable to keep the hiss from infecting his speech. “Aziraphale, do you--have you--Oh for somebody’s sake, put the bloody gloves down and _look at me._ ”

To his credit, Aziraphale did appear appropriately abashed as he sidled back around to face Crowley, cheeks warm and eyes lowered in contrition.

“My apologies, Crowley. I certainly care more for your well-being than that of some leather and wire.”

Aziraphale set the glasses and gloves carefully down beside Crowley’s discarded jacket, frowned, and seated himself on the floor before Crowley, elegantly and slowly, as if he were balancing a book on his head. Crowley couldn’t help but gape at him, all the adrenaline corralled into a tiny corner of his mind as he watched the angel hem and haw his way into relative comfort on the floor of his bathroom. He could have laughed, but if he started, he feared he would never stop.

“Now then,” Aziraphale huffed, smoothing out the wrinkles in his waistcoat. “You don’t seem to be harmed, so would you mind perhaps telling me what all this is about? There is champagne awaiting us in the living area, or whatever passes for it with your taste in furniture, and I was looking forward to drinking it sooner than later. In fact, I was looking forward to a bit more than the champagne, my dear, if you would be so kind.”

Crowley stared.

Aziraphale arched an eyebrow.

“Angel,” Crowley ventured, fighting with his lipless, snake-tongued mouth to form the words. “What. What do I look like. To you. Right now.”

For a moment, Crowley thought he could make out a glimmer of something in Aziraphale’s eyes, a flash of hesitation, of nerves, something reminiscent of a thermos of holy water and a bandstand at the end of the world. It faded away in an instant, but Crowley felt the Wall rumble ominously all the same.

“You look… you look like my former adversary, the only friend I can claim to have in this world, the demon Crowley. You have the most striking red hair--oh, how I’ve always adored your hair. Perhaps you might grow it out again, now that things have been sufficiently wrapped up with our head offices? It would be a nice change, I think. Though it looks wonderful any way you wear it, of course.”

Aziraphale paused to sweep his eyes contemplatively over Crowley’s newly-monstrous features. Crowley felt like he was dangling over a precipice, a single slip away from plummeting to the earth, or perhaps further still.

“I see your eyes. I think I would recognize your eyes even if I went a thousand years, another six thousand, even, without seeing them. They are rather unmissable, and simply stunning, if I do say so myself, even when you insist on hiding them.”

Crowley could feel his limbs attempting to escape into the streamlined shape of his snake form, and still, Aziraphale ignored the obvious. He was beginning to lose patience. What sort of reaction was this? Was the angel too stubborn to admit his terror? Was he afraid to insult him with the truth?

“Angel, stop. You don’t have to do this. Complimenting me. Avoiding the question. Lying to make me _feel better._ I know what I look like right now, and so do you! _For somebody’s sake,_ I don’t have a nose! Or _lips!”_ Crowley knew he was snarling, spitting around his reptilian teeth and tongue, but the rage wouldn’t stop. The little bubble of adrenaline had well and truly burst, he’d spent all day running, and now he wanted to fight. “Just admit it, admit that you can’t bear to look at me like this, and go fuck off back to your _champagne_ and whatever it is that you’re _looking forward to_ so I can get back to the way we were before I started getting stupid ideas about what you want from me!”

Aziraphale looked thunderstruck, but there was no trace of fear to be found. Crowley almost felt cheated.

“Oh, my dear. My _dearest._ Crowley, do you really think--?” His hands fluttered again, but this time they appeared to be fighting the urge to reach out, to _touch him._ The stones on the Wall began to crack. “I seem to be making a mess of things, as usual. I never meant to--I thought you--You said, at lunch. We made a toast, _To the world,_ and I thought that we were in agreement as to what that had meant, but I see now that I should have made more of an effort to be sure of your thoughts on the matter.

“And to see you in here, like this, I--well, I wasn’t certain what to think, to be honest. After I knew you weren’t hurt, I suppose the idea was, ah, you know, ‘Perhaps he’s actually more comfortable like this.’ I see now that I’ve been inexcusably obtuse, to brush past you like that, to give attention to the parts of you that were familiar to me rather than to the ones you seem to want to share. It is apparent that my assumptions are far more trouble than they’re worth.”

Aziraphale paused for breath and reached out to Crowley, his restless hands at last losing the fight to keep away from him. The angel’s soft, smooth hand brushed against Crowley’s black-scaled cheek, and if he could cry while in snake-mode, he would nearly be in danger of doing so.

“W-why are you touching me. You’re _touching me._ And I--I look like _this._ I’ve tried so hard to stay human for you, Aziraphale. How can you just _touch me_ now?”

“Darling, whether you look human or not makes no nevermind to me. How could it? You’re a demon, dear boy. You’ve always been more than human. You are beyond human by the very definition, and I’ve wanted to touch you for decades. Well, actually, I’ve wanted to touch you for a number of millenia, but--ah. At any rate, the point is that whatever form you choose to take, I will happily indulge, if you’ll have me.”

Crowley wheezed, his chest elongating in a slow, slithery push. Aziraphale did not flinch or shy away. His hand remained tender as it caressed his flattened cheekbone, pressed against his temple, traced the outline of his mouth. The Wall groaned, and several heavy, grey stones sloughed off from its sides.

“But. The Arrangement is over now. We’ve already tricked our head offices. We don’t have to work together anymore. I know you don’t like my. You know. _Evil deeds._ And whatever. You’ve never--I’ve never--We don’t _do_ this Aziraphale. I’m a demonic serpent-monster-creature-thing, and you’re. You’re you.”

In a heartstopping moment, Crowley thought Aziraphale might cry. His lower lip trembled in a way that would have been terribly endearing if it didn’t make Crowley ache with the need to comfort him, and Crowley could barely tear his focus away from it. When he managed to look up, Aziraphale’s eyes had gone all dewy and his brows were tilted in that expression that he wore when he’d just seen an adorable animal trip and fall over.25

“Crowley.” Aziraphale’s expression suddenly shifted into his _explaining face,_ his lovely, warm hand left Crowley’s cheek in favor of straightening his bow tie, and his tone brooked no argument. Crowley resisted the urge to recoil at the contrast. “I feel that I must clarify the reasoning behind my actions today if we are to make any progress, and frankly this conversation is long overdue, so please do sit and listen quietly for a moment or else I shall lose my nerve, and we shall be back where we started.”

Crowley nodded.

“Well. In short, while we were enjoying our wonderful meal at the Ritz, you said--we said something, and I believe that I may have ascribed a certain amount of meaning to it that you did not entirely intend.”

Aziraphale shifted, and Crowley could feel him working up to something. He hoped that the revelation, whatever it was, would be merciful and quick so that he could curl up and lick his wounds in peace.

“You see, when you had said _To the world,_ my assumption was that you had meant that as a--well. As a declaration of sorts, if you catch my meaning. A toast to the two of us, _together,_ for as long as we both could stand it, in the new lives we’d so unceremoniously found ourselves living. And all of my actions from that moment forward have been attempts, clumsy though they may have been, to. Ah. Reciprocate.” Aziraphale cleared his throat, hands fussing with the edge of his waistcoat. “Physically and otherwise.”

Crowley’s mouth fell open in something resembling panic, his tongue flicking, sensing, trying to process. “You mean like--”

“Yes, well, we don’t really need to look at it all that closely, my dear--”

“Shut up. You mean like, _kissing?_ You thought I was dragging you up here for a _snog?”_

Aziraphale’s lips pursed and his gaze flicked to the side, cheeks fetchingly pink. “Among other things. Possibly.”

A great tumult rumbled within Crowley, and suddenly the Wall didn’t seem so much a cliff as an inconvenient stone fence. “So you...you thought I. You thought I meant. That I was telling you--”

“That you care for me, yes. Though clearly that’s not what you meant, so I--”

“You were happy about it? When you thought--”

“Yes, I rather was, but--”

“ _Aziraphale._ You wanted to kiss me.”

“Yes, my dear. I did. I still do.”

Crowley hissed, this time from pure, incredible, impossible relief, before the true weight of the angel’s confession sank in. “You want to kiss me _now?_ While I’m all--”

Aziraphale huffed and fixed him with a glare. “I do believe that is what I just said. If you’ll recall, none of that makes much difference to me, my dear. Whatever I might have said in the past, I have only ever cared to see _you,_ to spend time with _you,_ to be with _you,_ whatever form you might take.”

Somehow, despite himself, a laugh worked free from within him. It tickled against the parts of his more-than-half-snake chest that were no longer built for it, but this only made him laugh louder. Aziraphale looked distinctly hurt, however, so by some miracle,26 Crowley managed to sober himself and meet the angel’s eye.

“Aziraphale. I have no lips.”

The angel’s face glowed then, as it had in the Ritz, filled with light and life, and for the first time that day, Crowley paid full attention, no circling thoughts or biting reminders to be found in his head.

“I’m sure we can manage, darling.”

Aziraphale leaned in, caressed the side of his face again, and Crowley pressed into it, unwilling to waste a moment longer on his own doubts. Well, except for one last thing.

“Angel, wait. You love me, right? That’s the takeaway from all this?” His eyes itched as he waited for the response. Snakes can’t cry, they _can’t,_ but Crowley’s body was fighting valiantly to manage it nonetheless. He ignored it.

“Oh, my dearest. Yes. I am desperately in love with you, and I have been for far longer than I can even say.”

Aziraphale’s smile then could have sustained Crowley for the next thousand years, but he realized that it wouldn’t need to. He could have this forever now, every day, for as long as the world turned, and perhaps beyond. Where there once had been a towering promise of solitude, a monument to all the things that kept him from stepping out into the world, there was now rubble, mere pebbles beneath his feet. The angel was waiting on the other side.

“I--Ah. Me too, angel.” He swallowed, forced his snake throat to accommodate speech for just a moment longer. “I love you too.”

Aziraphale smiled at him again. _Someone,_ would he ever get used to that? At last, at last, they closed the distance, and Aziraphale pressed his soft mouth against Crowley’s lipless one. The kiss was slow, and chaste, and strange, and not strange at all. Crowley might die.

Finally, Crowley’s body slipped fully into his serpent form, free and content with its own presence. He noticed, incredibly, that becoming a snake made no difference to the warmth of Aziraphale against his skin, to the comfort of meeting him in the middle, to the way that Aziraphale stroked over his jaw. When they broke apart, Aziraphale was still there in front of him, had made no move to run away, or even to distance himself.

“Come along now, dear,” Aziraphale said, his eyes twinkling. “It’s been quite a day. Let’s get you settled in on the sofa. I believe the champagne is still awaiting us, and we can put on the television, if you like. What was that show you mentioned, with the four ladies?” He trailed off, standing and brushing imaginary dust from his trousers.

Crowley took a deep breath, flexed his long, lithe snake muscles for the first time in millennia, and slithered after his angel towards the living room. His mind was calm for once, and he desperately enjoyed the silence from the vanishing remains of the Wall. He knew at once that with the Wall in ruins and his doubts well and truly vanquished, his human-shaped form was a thought away whenever he wished to return to it. For the moment, however, Aziraphale was waiting for him, and he wouldn’t waste a single second. It was time to explore the new world.

  1. As if the simple truth of Aziraphale’s presence wasn’t the only thing keeping Crowley from leaping headfirst down to Hell after him.
  2. This was, in fact, entirely possible for Crowley to accomplish in a number of different ways, but as he had neither the desire to horrify the Ritz clientele nor the presence of mind to return to his body once he’d been spiritually ejected, he opted to clutch at the tablecloth with his free hand and inform his skin that he would remain right where he was, thanks very much.
  3. In friendly greeting, on the hand or cheek, and only when social etiquette required, but still.
  4. Not for the first time.
  5. Unfortunately, Crowley had a propensity to exhibit some of his snake features while in emotional distress, which was a whole lot of rubbish, and he hated it immensely.
  6. Aziraphale was a very popular candidate for his snake-vision’s focus, as he was warm, close, and usually breathing. This was a certifiable inconvenience at the best of times and horrifyingly uncomfortable at the worst.
  7. In retrospect, this should have been a major clue. Touching Aziraphale had never been anything but transcendentally _right_ in the past.
  8. He was a _demon,_ and he had never in his long life been _hot_ aside from those few occasions in which literal fire was involved. Even then, the effect was somewhat more akin to an uncomfortable sauna than incineration.
  9. The wallet was entirely forgotten in his haste, and it was somewhat surprised to find itself hanging uncomfortably half-in and half-out of a pocket dimension in Crowley’s trousers.
  10. They were even smaller with the addition of a half-present wallet. Crowley’s hand-hiding efforts finally forced it back where it came from, much to its relief.
  11. Which, for him, was very, very quickly.
  12. Literally? Crowley wasn’t sure anymore whether there was a secret snake-themed punishment involved in the scheming from Heaven and Hell at this point. He wouldn’t put it past them.
  13. This wasn’t true, not by a long shot, and the bookshop fire still retained its place of honour, closely followed by the entire fourteenth century and most of the events of the past week. In the moment, though, he felt pretty damn horrible.
  14. _Aziraphale likes mallow twists,_ Crowley thought hysterically. His self-preservation stomped down on that idea with all its might.
  15. Young is a relative term here, of course. He’d literally existed since time immemorial, but that didn’t change the fact that there was much more to be learned on Earth than Heavenly or Hellish briefings could ever cover.
  16. At times, this was not very well at all. Roman style certainly came to mind. Why should it make a difference what kind of toga-pins he used?
  17. And, in fact, he had.
  18. Less in the _consecrated ground_ way and more in the _trying not to exist_ way. He wasn’t sure which was worse, honestly.
  19. It might have behooved Crowley to remember that there had not been a snake-related “time before” up to this point aside from the experience in Eden, but as has been established, Crowley was not exactly capable of remembering much of use at the moment. There had, however, been plenty of “times before” in which Aziraphale had refused him for other reasons. These had never been forgotten.
  20. In accordance with their status as supernatural entities, Demons did not need to bathe (even after their corporations had taken a trip Downstairs to attend a would-be execution). However, most Demons chose to deliberately affect a certain funk, and Hell itself did reek rather horribly as a result. All of this to say that Crowley was obviously not one of those demons, he certainly did not need to wash up, and he was possibly not the best at making excuses while under Aziraphale-related pressure.
  21. Not that he could have managed another word anyway. It seems his (questionably existent) coolness reserves were well and truly depleted.
  22. It was intended to be an intimidatingly avant-garde commentary on identity and the pride of the common man (or some other artistic pretension), meant to serve as an obscure statement piece rather than a functional furnishing. Whenever the bathroom was called into existence, Crowley made sure of its presence.
  23. Obviously, he failed.
  24. If Crowley had had the wherewithal to maintain his usual sense of dark humor, he might have joked that he _had_ Fallen, and that it _had_ rather hurt, but he was in no state to think of such things at the moment, and thus the opportunity passed him by.
  25. Only now that look was directed at Crowley, and his demonic side balked at the comparison to anything even remotely adorable, especially not while he was mostly snake.
  26. For once, _not_ literally.




End file.
